


Deeper By The Hour

by RoryKurago



Series: First Floor People [1]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fight Club Fusion, BAMF Mako Mori, Cage Fights, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Other, Polyamory, Pre-Relationship, Tumblr Ask Box Fic, Tumblr Prompt, Yancy Becket Dies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-25
Updated: 2015-08-25
Packaged: 2018-04-17 04:58:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4653246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoryKurago/pseuds/RoryKurago
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yancy'd wanted them to get out, but Yancy was a long time gone. By the time Raleigh hit Chicago he was cut up but callused. Knuckles scabbed over; fingers permanently curled. Just wanted to lie down and die somewhere, and tear up the world at the same time. This is how he set foot in the cage every time. This is how he squared off against a mountain of muscle straight outta Down Under.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Deeper By The Hour

**Author's Note:**

> Anon requested 'First Floor People' by Barcelona, and Chaleigh. I don't do Chaleigh, but I WILL do Chakoleigh.  
> Unbeta'd, but if you've got feedback, shoot it through.

Yancy’d wanted them to get out. (Never wanted them to get in.) But it’d been a good way to pay the bills, to support Jaz, to put Jaz through college—

And then one guy: too big, too rough. Blue-black Tā moko and a grating laugh.

Then: three hours in the ER waiting room. Blood drying on Raleigh’s jeans, local fuzz jumping in the foyer, and Jaz—Jaz beside him with her white face, white knuckles, watching the clock and counting seconds in French: _trente, trente et un, trente-deux_.

Then: Jaz screaming at him while he covered the mouthpiece of the phone on a call to the funeral home.

Jaz packing up her things and never coming back from Boston.

Raleigh packing up Yancy’s things. (Not that sweater; not Maman’s ring.) Raleigh picking the scabs off his knuckles and flexing til they bled, blood mixing with condensation on the last bottle of beer in the shitty apartment they barely made rent on. Raleigh with a rucksack of the few things he wanted to keep.

In every town he found his way back to the down-and-out bars where they’d pay him to punch out his rage. Started small; got bigger with the hole inside him. No name, no reputation to precede him. ‘Down in the Underground’, Yancy called it: this way of fighting out of one day into the next.

By the time he hit Chicago he was cut up but callused. Knuckles scabbed over; fingers permanently curled. Just wanted to lie down and die somewhere, and tear up the world at the same time.

This is how he set foot in the cage every time. This is how he looked when he asked the sharp-looking Brit who runs this pitfight to put him on the card. (More upscale than usual; does it make a difference to Raleigh?) This is how he squared off against a mountain of muscle straight outta Down Under, and he didn’t for a second doubt himself.

Yancy was next to Maman and Raleigh hadn’t spoken to Jaz in a year. What the fuck did he have to lose?

Loudmouth talked a lot of shit. Bounced too much in his warm-up.

Raleigh closed too quick in the first minute and took a solid sock to the jaw because he misjudged how quick the guy was—but he landed two solid rips to the guy’s ribs and Red wasn’t standing too straight when they broke away from each other. If Raleigh let him score an uppercut, Raleigh was going to pop off his feet like an oyster out of its shell. He hunkered down instead and lurched into a clinch.

The guy was a brawler, all right: he closed more eagerly than Raleigh did. Swung less wildly. But he hooked lower; held his elbows in like he was used to guarding against someone much shorter than him, not taller like Raleigh. Shorter meant his bracing might be off.

Raleigh hooked a foot up under the guy’s guard and teeped. Red lurched back. He hit the wire and bounced.

How long had it been, Raleigh thought when the buzzer went, since someone stood up to Raleigh more than one round? (Whitehorse? Kamloops?)

Momentarily he forgot he cared when the brawler retreated to his corner and the support crew stepped up. The woman who lifted the water bottle–

She had a towel around her neck and her fighter cornrows were sweat-wet and shot with electric blue. She was— Raleigh must’ve missed her bout, but he didn’t see her in the Ready Room. She nodded in agreement with what another older, scruffier redhead was muttering to the brawler.

The support guy in Raleigh’s corner – 50’s hair and a neck tattoo; pit crew, not Raleigh’s – offered a water bottle dispassionately. (Paying more attention to the Brit watching from the howling gantry crowd than Raleigh.) When the greaser glanced down at the other corner, Raleigh caught a tiny nod from the woman. Then her eyes flicked to himself.

Yancy in the ground, a year since Raleigh talked to Jaz, and how long since he wanted to do more than maybe fuck a barfly in a dirty bathroom and then collapse into bed on his own?

She bent her neck to say something to the brawler, tendons and muscle shifting finely beneath the skin. The brawler’s eyes were fixed on Raleigh. When he nodded and accepted the mouthguard back from his crew chief, he unconsciously angled his head to mimic hers. When he stood there was an economy to his movements that wasn’t there before. He rose and stripped off his wifebeater in one smooth motion.

Breathing deeply got harder even before the greaser thumped Raleigh on the arm and said “Let’s go, brother.”

Raleigh lost. There was a pink line of scarring under the brawler’s eye; freckles scattered lighter over his shoulders than his arms (like dirt on varnished pine, how many caskets in a row, how long since he listened to Yancy’s last voicemail—) It had been a long time since Raleigh noticed things like that. He let himself get clinched in, didn’t even feel guilty about the pleasure-pain of swinging around the cage chest-to-chest trying to knee each other in the kidneys.

When the bout was over, he cleaned up. Patched up. (Brawler landed that uppercut; split Raleigh’s chin.) Greaser’s name was Tendo, and he only grinned when Raleigh asked the woman’s name.

She was at the bar when Raleigh climbed back to the spectators’ level, talking to three shaven-headed Asian men in finely tailored suits. They shot Raleigh evil looks when he approached, but moved off to watch the start of the next round: someone Kaidonovsky.

The woman had cleaned up and changed into a backless dress but she’d left her braids in. She had a tattoo up her arm: segmented sword culminating in a fiery swirl at the shoulder. She told him she’d dreamt it. Up close she smelt like sarsaparilla and something fruity, but underneath that was the hot metal of the cage lights.

She didn’t drink. (Eyebrow raised; a little flash of white behind those lips.) Carbs, et cetera. But he could buy her a lime and soda.

The brawler took up a position at the bar on her other side, elbows on the wood. (Dress shirt and suit pants now, but there was bruising up his neck from Raleigh’s clinch, and he’d rolled up his sleeves past the forearm.) He watched Raleigh over Mako’s head with hooded eyes, ready to start something again.

Mako amended her statement. Raleigh could buy them _both_ one.

Heat crawled up Raleigh’s spine, his skin tingled like the first time he set foot in a ring, and for the first time in ages he felt like _himself_. He slapped money on the bar and offered a hand to the brawler. They shook hands behind Mako’s back and her skin, where their joined hands touched it, was warm.


End file.
